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Before the UN Climate Talks in Lima, the New York Times told us that “at stake now is the difference between a newly unpleasant world and an uninhabitable one.” But in Lima, the world's governments chose the latter, offering the world not solutions but rather a roadmap to global burning.

Are we really just going to sit by and watch until most species on earth—including our own—go extinct? Or are we going to turn up the heat on our tone-deaf leaders in every way that we can, until they finally realize they have to stand up to the fossil fuel companies, and stop the carbon madness?

Beginning in Janurary, we're inviting the entire People's Climate March network to join us for an ongoing organizing campaign on the Action Switchbaord so we can keep the pressure building. You're invited! Please join us! The Action Switchboard is a new organizing tool designed specifically to help movements continue building momentum in between the big moments. We'll be using it to stay connected as a network and keep doing actions together all year long!

Join us by entering your name and email address into the form on this page, and we'll invite you to calls and actions as we get started!

How will history remember the People’s Climate March?

In September, we all answered the rallying cry and came out for the People’s Climate March. It was the largest demonstrations for climate justice the world has ever seen. With 2000 demonstrations in 162 countries, the People’s Climate March (PCM) brought millions of people into the streets. It was incredible! It was inspiring!

But was it enough? What will history ultimately say about the People’s Climate March?

History will certainly remember the march itself, but what about the impact afterwards? Will the march have been a one-time event that got a big media splash and raised awareness of climate change issues—only to fade into memory as we all slip back into the status quo? Or will it have been the game-changing, catalytic event that sparked a new level of climate action all over the world, putting continual pressure on governments and corporations so that they finally started making the right decisions affecting our planet?

Obviously, we’re hoping for the latter outcome…. and we want to help make it happen. We know you do too.

Here’s the plan:

We are the Yes Men. You may have heard of us; we’re pretty well known for our outrageous satirical interventions at business events, on the internet, on television, and in the streets.

Over the years, literally thousands of activists have asked us to help them get more attention for their campaigns. We get way more requests for help than we can possibly handle! So, we recently released the Action Switchboard, an online platform that helps anyone at all pull off creative actions to launch continual actions for building movements. Not only that, but we also just premiered our third movie, The Yes Men Are Revolting, which we specifically crafted to inspire people to get out into the streets, take matters into their own hands, and take real action around climate change.

Of course we didn’t know that the climate movement would be at this critical crossroads just as we were releasing these new tools for action, but since it is, we need to use everything that we’ve been working on for the past few years to help make sure that the PCM is remembered as the moment that truly did change everything... the moment that turned things around, and—who knows—even saved the world!

Join us! We need you!

How’s this going to work?

The Action Switchboard is a new tool that helps activists brainstorm ideas, build a team, and get the resources you need to pull them off. Not only that, but if you need someone with a particular skill (videographer? actor? people willing to be arrested?) - then we will help you find the right person from our database of activists who are standing by to help!

We’ve partnered with network organizers from the People’s Climate March, who can help develop and support your actions.

Over the next 6 months, we will be hosting ongoing conference calls and in-person brainstorms so you can come up with actions and keep your network strong and working together. We will help you stay connected and informed by sharing news from all of your actions with everyone who joins this project.

As our new film, The Yes Men Are Revolting, is screened across the world, it will bring new climate activists into our movement. By continuing to stay active and engaged now, those newly inspired activists will discover a thriving network to help shepherd them into participating in actions. This could be great way to build our movement.

We are also exploring ways that you can screen the film yourself, in your own communities, to get the conversation started about climate activism. You might do this as a fundraiser for your projects, or use it to start local climate action groups to plan actions in your community.

Honestly, this is all a no-brainer. We have to do this. We just released these tools that support a network to build ongoing actions together, and it just so happens that it is ready just in time for this huge network that just formed from the PCM. Will you join us so we can keep building pressure, reject their roadmap to global burning, and just maybe turn things around?

(This press release is courtesy of the SaveCanada organizers. See also this article, among many.)

TransCanada tries to replace Grassroots with P.R. Assholes

Leaked TransCanada documents about their proposed Keystone XL alternative, the Canada-spanning Energy East Pipeline, show just how dirty TransCanada is willing to get in their desperate attempt to ship dirty tar sands oil to the coast. According to these leaked documents, some of that dirt is to be slung at the Yes Lab.

To push their newest mega pipeline, they hired the mega misinformation PR goons Edelman to mess with the communities and groups along the route. The leaked documents show the strategy of attacking grassroots groups with smear campaigns while at the same time establishing phony grassroots to emulate support. Third-party proxy groups would be used to do the smearing, and to "put the pressure on, especially when TransCanada can't"—while the phony grassroots support would be conducted by the same Edelman PR gang that were caught astroturfing for the fake 'Working Families for WalMart' campaign (among other notable PR fails).

Perhaps TransCanada posing as a grassroots movement to establish phony public support was somehow inspired by the YesLab's SaveCanada action where we impersonated their PR team at their official community consultations.

In towns across Canada, troupes of mischievous activists swarmed TransCanada's events dressed just like their reps, but with lookalike "SaveCanada" shirts, name tags and brochures. Instead of promoting the pipeline, the SaveCanada reps communicated the risks. They even used TransCanada's map for an impromptu game of Pin the Spill on the Pipeline.

In one of the leaked documents SaveCanada is listed second on a list of groups targeted by Edelman for conducting "a preliminary audit of opposition groups and their messages."

Elsewhere, SaveCanada is listed as a national group that apparently "migrated (their) efforts and expertise into the Canadian policy arena." It seems Edelman's prowess for misinformation even extends to the briefings they put together for their client TransCanada.

TransCanada has run into difficulty selling this Keystone XL replacement to the public, and out of difficulty comes desperation. The leaked documents vow they will "add layers of difficulty for our opponents, distracting them from their mission and causing them to redirect their resources." This is part of their "pressure approach." All this is very classy for a company that has just filed this Energy East Pipeline project for regulatory consideration in Canada so is currently trying to sell themselves to the communities as a "good neighbor."

Edelman is the largest public relations firm in the World and Energy East would be the largest tar sands pipeline in the World. One leaks dishonesty and the other would leak diluted bitumen.

The main strategy document leaked emphasizes the ruthlessness of these tactics by saying, “we cannot allow opponents to have a free pass.” We would very much agree with that sentiment, but change it slightly, "we cannot let our opponents build the Climate-destroying, community-polluting Energy East Pipeline."

On June 18, 2014 Op de Valreep which won Alert Fund's Most Valued Project Award, was evicted by city government but not before activists put up an epic thirteen hour resistance where riot cops had to break through massive barricades and angle grind loose more than 10 people out of lockons. The neighbourhood has lost her living room, the city has lost one of her very, very few last free spaces, the politic establishment has lost all their credibility and Valreep volunteers have lost their home. But as they told the Yes Men:

Despite a major campaign in the run-up to the elections, where the posters of all political parties were spoofed…Despite putting the city slogan "I AMsterdam" in massive three dimensional letters on top of the roof…Despite going to the city council for the hundredth time with hundreds of sympathisers, thousands of signatures, and a fullsize brassband…Despite the massive support from the neighbourhood, in the city, throughout the country…Despite winning the Alert fund Most Valued Project Award…

…Despite all of that, the city stubbornly decided to evict social centre Op de Valreep, the peoples initiative that was free to everyone and was run for almost three years solely by volunteers and without subsidies.

The city government has NEVER granted Valreep's SINGLE demand: Let us present our plans and consider us for renting/buying the place. We have a valid businessplan and investors backing that plan.

The Valreep will probably remain empty for a year, or more likely a few years, or as the case may be much longer, as they will presumably focus on redevelopment of the surrounding grounds. Eventually it will be renovated into yet another posh grand cafe (for the elite).

Despite the sense of loss of Valreep, its crucial to look at what worked.Valreep volunteers wrote in that they were able to survive for three years by enacting a massive campaign which incorporated feedback from The Yes Men. The kind of person to person, online to on-the-ground collaboration, support and hard core organizing that the Action Switchboard is rolling out to the wider movement very soon.

Contractors, lobbyists and officials attending the Homeland Security Congress in Washington DC yesterday did a "traditional" Native American circle dance to celebrate a fictitious new US government plan, the "American Renewable Clean-Energy Network" (AmeriCAN), to convert the US to 100% renewable energy by 2030. (Photos here; other material here.)

The conference attendees—including a retired Navy Admiral, a retired USAF General, a former Seal Team Seven leader, an aspiring Republican Congressman, lobbyists, and many homeland security contractors—applauded frequently during the stirring announcement by the US Department of Energy's "Benedict Waterman" (actually Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men), as well as the eloquent speech by "Bana Slowhorse" of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (actually Gitz Crazyboy, a youth worker from the Athabascan Chippewyan First Nations, whose land includes the Alberta Tar Sands).

"Bana's" speech concluded: "We are all the Department of Energy." All attendees then danced a "celebratory circle dance" to the singing of "Drum Chief Four Feathers" (actually Tito Ybarra, an Ojibwe comedian and singer). After the event, two dozen contractors lined up to hand "Waterman" and "Slowhorse" their cards and offer their services in carrying out the conversion.

"Waterman's" energy plan would redirect oil company tax breaks and subsidies to support renewables instead; commit "Manhattan Project-level" Defense spending to renewables in order to prevent future climate-change-related conflicts; and partner with Native American nations whose lands could provide all of our renewable energy needs.

The plan, based on a number of sources including Stanford's Solutions Project (FAQ here), would produce nearly 8 million jobs; save $530 billion per year in health-care costs alone; result in much lower eventual fuel costs and greater price stability; and provide much greater energy security. It would also reduce the risk of the climate change effects that are projected to cost the US at least $2 trillion per year by 2100 if nothing is done to address it.

Best of all, "Waterman" said, the plan would make a survivable future more likely. He also said that the government was enacting this plan because people are increasingly upset about climate change, and that if we don't take revolutionary action today, there could be a real revolution tomorrow. The conference attendees applauded this statement too.

The action was intended to spread two messages: first, that a complete renewables conversion is indeed possible today, with our current technology; and second, that it will only happen if millions of people take action to force our leaders to truly represent us.

We will be conducting a 2-day intensive trainingFebruary 8 & 9 at NYU and delving deep into all our creative toolboxes. Also, the Yes Lab will be unveiling our powerful new action development tool, the Action Switchboard. It’s going to be an exciting weekend where we all learn how to up our collective game. Individuals as well as organizaitons are encouraged equally to apply.

If you’d like to join us, APPLY HERE. If you can't make it, pass the word on to friends and colleagues. We are expecting more applications than there are spots in the workshop so not everyone who applies will be able to participate. We will start contacting accepted applicants on Feb. 1st.

HOW MUCH TIME?

The training is two full days: Saturday Feb 8 from 10-6 and Sunday Feb 9 from 10-5. The first day will be focused around strategy and principles, the second day applied tactics. We strongly encourage groups to attend both.

WHAT WILL WE LEARN?

STRATEGY! Trainers will lay a foundation of strategic tools and frameworks, such as…

Mapping your Spectrum of Allies

The 5 Points of Intervention

How to choose both Primary and Secondary Targets

Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) Analysis

Collapsing the Pillars of Power

Using Social Marketing Scale

Life Cycle Analysis/Mapping

TACTICS! We will dig deep into the Beautiful Trouble toolbox of creative tactics, which will offer your team a full spectrum of tools for creative brainstorming….

You will also be among the first to be introduced the Yes Lab’s revolutionary new tool, the Action Switchboard. The Action Switchboard is a human-staffed web-platform that connects activists, organizations, and people with skills in order to create and execute creative direct actions. Anyone can propose an action, recruit participants, and solicit funding all with the help of Yes Lab trained facilitators. Organizations can even sponsor issue areas or goals around their campaigns.

SKILLSHARE

In addition to all of the above, there will also be hands-on training in specific applied skillsets:

All attendees are asked to make a sliding scale contribution, based on ability to pay. Anchoring organizations are asked to contribute $1-2k for their team to attend, up to 5 people. Paid staff coming on their own are asked to contribute $250/person. At large individuals or unpaid activists

Come as an anchoring organization and bring as many as 5 people from your team. We will focus on taking one of your campaigns through a full creative development process, from strategy to tactics, from innovative ideas to the brass tacks of successful action design. Our best people will be at your service. Only $1-2K. It’s an incredible value for the time, tools and skills your team will receive.

HOW WILL THIS BENEFIT US?

So glad you asked! Among many benefits, your organization will receive…

The training to design and develop real-world actions that can be immediately deployed to serve your campaign goals.

The ability to build innovative action ideas atop a solid strategic foundation, that focuses and maximizes their impact.

Access to knowledge and skills already in your organization and team that have previously been unavailable.

New, inspirational approaches to your work that revitalizes your team and get’s them fired up.

An opportunity to form new alliances and recruit new blood.

NOTE: If you are an anchoring organization, we will prepare select tools specifically attuned to your current campaigns.

HOW DO WE APPLY?

We have only 50 spots, and they are filling up fast. If you are interested in coming, please APPLY HERE as soon as you can. Our operators are standing by.

NOTIFICATION

We are expecting more applications than there are spots in the workshop. Not everyone who applies will be able to participate. We will start contacting accepted applicants on Feb. 1st.

(Or: "Exposed: Hapless Yes Men Played for Fools by Sneaky Serbian Stooge")

Carl Gibson and Steve Horn’s misleading and poorly researched story—about the links between Srdja Popovic, cofounder of Otpor! and CANVAS, and a crappy corporate spy outfit named Stratfor—does no one any good.

Stratfor is evil, and Jeremy Hammond went to jail exposing them. Some of Popovic's choices—from talking to Stratfor in the first place, to working with activists in Venezuela to unseat a democratically-elected leader—can legitimately be called into question.

But yellow journalism, like conspiracy theorizing, does a disservice to those with such concerns. By making unfounded allegations about Popovic's involvement with Stratfor, by claiming without justification that he shared activists' info before gaining their consent, and by puzzlingly giving far disproportionate weight to the idiotic assertions of Stratfor operatives, Gibson and Horn's story not only unjustly trashes one of our most effective and inspiring activists, but caters to perhaps the worst tendency of the Left: taking refuge in shallow paranoia and conspiracy theories rather than asking the really hard questions—and doing the really hard work.

* * *

The title of Gibson and Horn's story begins in typical breathless yellow-journalism fashion: “Exposed.” Actually, not: an article in Waging Nonviolence had already thoughtfully and clearly addressed the Popovic-Stratfor connection more than a week before. In fact, that article could easily serve as a post-dated retort to Gibson and Horn’s piece, as it addresses most of their “points.”

The story in brief:

A 1990s-era friend of Popovic’s named Marko Papic went to work for Stratfor, which pretends to be a media outfit but actually specializes in selling the lowest-grade, laziest intelligence imaginable to corporations stupid enough to pay for it. (Here is our own rather breathless release about Stratfor's "spying" on us.)

Thanks to Papic, Stratfor invited Popovic to come give a talk at their offices in Austin, Texas. They covered his travel costs and gave him a $500 honorarium, which is what he typically charges those who can pay. (He doesn't charge activist groups or established media outlets.)

Popovic, perhaps mistaking Stratfor for actual analysts, continued to correspond with the Stratfor people, and, when they asked, gave them information on how popular movements work—which the Stratfor people didn’t take, perhaps not surprisingly given the radical nature of those ideas.

Popovic also put activists in touch with Stratfor—always, Popovic says, with the consent of the activists.

"Some people speak as if activists are a rare and fragile species living under glass jars," Popovic says. "But the activists I know did not become the world's top activists by living in jars.

"In the case of the Egyptian revolution—which the U.S. did not support—I did put the April 6 people in touch with Stratfor. Stratfor was approximately the tenth organization I put them in touch with. Six months before that, in exactly the same manner, I had put them in touch with Al Jazeera, resulting in 'Seeds of Change,' one of the most important pieces about the revolution.

"Should I have been concerned with what Stratfor is? Probably. But I'm sure the people in Egypt were spied upon by much more serious organizations—just as I was under Milosevic."

* * *

Popovic's interactions with Stratfor seem pretty obviously innocuous on a casual perusal of the Stratfor emails released last month by Wikileaks. But the theory that Gibson and Horn prefer to relate, against all evidence, is a much more exciting and perhaps more emotionally satisfying one. In their version, Popovic is employed by Stratfor to help US interests, and to help Stratfor spy on activists on behalf of corporations and governments; also, he is funded by Goldman Sachs and is as powerful as a battle cruiser. They achieve these conclusions mainly through a seemingly purposeful sloppiness.

For example, when Gibson and Horn add the Yes Men to the list of entities that Popovic helped Stratfor to spy on, they do it through a kind of juxtaposition that seems to be their stock in trade. After reeling out a laundry list of countries, including Egypt, whose activists Popovic supposedly compromised, the authors recount how Gibson and I met Popovic back in April 2011 and "gave Popovic information about both groups’ plans for the coming year and news later came out that Stratfor closely monitored the Yes Men’s activities."

There is obviously no connection between our meeting with Popovic and Stratfor’s spying on the Yes Men (which was very far indeed from “close monitoring”). As Gibson and Horn know very well, Stratfor had already “spied” on us for quite a long time—several years before Gibson and I met with Popovic that day in 2011. Their purposeful juxtaposition, however, leaves an entirely different impression.

Gibson and Horn also seem to give total credence to anything that Stratfor staffers say, no matter how silly. They quote Papic saying that CANVAS “basically go around the world trying to topple dictators and autocratic governments (ones that U.S. does not like ;)”—a phrase which manages to be patently false on several counts; CANVAS have in fact worked with activists from at least some 40 or 50 countries, many with movements that do not at all line up with US interests. Gibson and Horn also quote Papic ludicrously saying that CANVAS “just go and set up shop in a country and try to bring the government down. When used properly, more powerful than an aircraft carrier battle group.” A ridiculous statement, but by quoting it uncritically, the authors seem to be saying that Stratfor employs CANVAS to do just that.

When Gibson and Horn assert that Popovic is funded by a Goldman Sachs executive, how do they know? The speculation of Stratfor staffers.

Why do Gibson and Horn systematically take Stratfor's word over that of Popovic (whom they interviewed but hardly quoted), and quote Stratfor's emails as fact, even though at many points the Stratfor analysts acknowledge their conclusions are speculative or that they don't have hard evidence? Any other time, activists would critique and try to debunk Stratfor—yet Gibson and Horn choose to take them at their word, however obviously unreliable that word may be.

At one point Gibson and Horn state that Popovic penned for Stratfor a report on how to unseat Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, even though Popovic told them explicitly in an interview that he drafted the report with Venezuelan activists, for activists, and with the knowledge from the outset that it would be made public and available for anyone to read, including governments or Stratfor. One can disagree with the very idea of working to unseat a democratically elected leader like Chavez, but the broad misrepresentations of Gibson and Horn's article do nothing to further this—or any other—discussion.

* * *

Gibson interviewed me twice by phone for his article and I also wrote him extensively by email about how they were barking up the wrong tree—but nothing I said appeared in the article. Popovic told me he also wrote a six-page response to Gibson's interview questions, including much that challenged the article's narrative, but the authors chose to exclude him as well, except for a one-off quote at the end that they quickly dismiss.

Was this shoddily-researched, nearly logic-free article custom-made to be divisive and sow discord, in the style of COINTELPRO, the FBI's '60s-era program aimed at discrediting and disrupting domestic political organizations? Or do Gibson and Horn just want to make a name for themselves at the expense of the truth and the reputation of a well-respected activist?

Perhaps. But there's another factor in all this, that could make it even more damaging: the predilection for conspiracy theorizing that besets a lazy segment of the Left.

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Wikileaks released a number of leaked texts mentioning 9/11. Julian Assange told me he expected the 9/11 truthers to go nuts and examine it all with a fine-toothed comb, and that he was quite disappointed when they didn’t. As Assange has written, “I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.” (Such statements have earned Wikileaks the status of CIA plot in the nuttosphere.)

The problem is, like yellow journalists, 9/11 "truthers" aren’t actually interested in the truth; rather, they need the WTC towers to have been knocked down by our government. They need the Bush administration to have been, against every last shred of formal and informal evidence, incredibly competent, and to have planned 9/11 and then miraculously kept the evidence so hidden that no experts of any stature at all would ever support it.

* * *

As Assange notes, if you actually want to fight a conspiracy, there’s a whole smorgasbord to choose from. There’s the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a highly secretive and expansive free trade agreement that few people know about. There’s a Russian-Dutch partnership to exploit the Arctic. There’s ongoing COINTELPRO-style police surveillance of activists. There’s the Republican conspiracy to scuttle Obamacare. And the biggest one of all: the oil companies' conspiracy to make sure their value doesn't disappear.

The real powers arrayed against us are much, much more frightening than Stratfor. But it's easier to spin crackpot ideas, or to "expose" supposed plots between activists and corporate-spy charlatans, than to organize against the TPP, oil companies, or those trying to destroy Obamacare. Conspiracy theorizing not only offers an evil father to those who need one, it offers a much higher chance of personal glory if you should happen to be right—or even if not. (Gibson and Horn's article has already been widely reprinted, and they're even starting to appear on television.)

Real conspiracies are daunting, hard to deal with, and offer few opportunities for journalists to make a name for themselves. Gibson and Horn can do better. Let's stop looking for fake conspiracies amongst our activist allies, and get back to taking on the real conspiracy—global capitalism—that's destroying the planet.

Russia wishes to hereby erect our opposition. Like the Netherlands, Russia is well-endowed member of international oil community. But Yes Men hooligans make fun of Russia/Dutch coupling with stupid bear puppet in Amsterdam. That is gay to not only Russia, but to whole Netherlands people too.

Russia is like real and extremely large and strong bear: Moscow at head, paws on Middle East, wild Arctic at rear. Dutch come to help Russia thrust deep and hard to tame that rear for all Man's benefit. Yes Men try to stop us, but limp fake bearhood is no match for firm real manhood of Russia and Netherlands ganging together.